I recommend you Steinberg Virtual Guitarist, I achieved great results with  strumming and arpeggios, I prefer acoustic edition

RealGuitar and the other MusicLab products are the best (and I own several others so I am speaking from experience). For strumming, it won't take too much work to get realistic parts. For lead playing, you either have to understand guitar or else keep the parts very simple. I do some good leads with virtual guitars but call in players for complex things. A good player not only plays better parts, he/she THINKS of better parts.

Acoustic Guitar is more difficult to fake than electric, particularly heavily distorted or effected electric guitars.

For Kontakt 4 (and later) owners Orange Tree's Steel Strings is about as good as it gets for Acoustic guitar emulation.

For strumming you set up 12 articlations mapped to 12 trigger keys (or use on of the presets). The articulations let you set up stroke, down stroke, the degree of mute, the number of strings in the strum etc. You hold down a chord on the keyboard and its converted into a proper guitar voicing, then strum it using the strum keys. The MOD wheel controls the alternative chord voicings.

Also for Kontakt, Indiginus ACC can be reasonably effective. Its a lot simpler (and much cheaper) than Steel Strings or Real Guitar but is very direct and intuitive. The main limitation is a maximum of 12 chord voicings per instance. Articulations, like mutes, are velocity switched.

The best results will always be from a competent guitarist propery mic'ed up. But for faking parts that are not too far forward in the mix there are options.

Realtracks via Band In A Box is another option.

+1 Keebo. And it's so easy to do.

I agree with Sidroe to a point-
I have been playing guitar for about 35 years. I heard a keyboard player using no trick software play a hell of a guitar. Could I tell the difference? Of course.
But the point I am making is - it's how the was playing and voicing chords that made it sound as good as it did.

Real Guitar in all it's forms is pretty cool and sounds good. BUT.... to get it sounding good, you practically have to learn new skills in thinking like a guitar player and translate that to the keyboard. 

As good as it is, you just can not simply buy it and presto you're playing like SRV or Hendrix. 

Practice with it and you WILL  be able to fool a large number of guitar players. 

Glyn Barnes


Acoustic Guitar is more difficult to fake than electric, particularly heavily distorted or effected electric guitars.

For Kontakt 4 (and later) owners Orange Tree's Steel Strings is about as good as it gets for Acoustic guitar emulation.

For strumming you set up 12 articlations mapped to 12 trigger keys (or use on of the presets). The articulations let you set up stroke, down stroke, the degree of mute, the number of strings in the strum etc. You hold down a chord on the keyboard and its converted into a proper guitar voicing, then strum it using the strum keys. The MOD wheel controls the alternative chord voicings.

Also for Kontakt, Indiginus ACC can be reasonably effective. Its a lot simpler (and much cheaper) than Steel Strings or Real Guitar but is very direct and intuitive. The main limitation is a maximum of 12 chord voicings per instance. Articulations, like mutes, are velocity switched.

The best results will always be from a competent guitarist propery mic'ed up. But for faking parts that are not too far forward in the mix there are options.

How would you compare the sound quality of the ones you mentioned to Kontakts own Akkord Guitar? I know Akkord isn't near as adjustable, but what about the sound itself? I ask, because I think Akkord sounds quite nice, but is a bit short of options.

The great thing about using a piece of software to emulate a guitarist is that you don't get any of the ego..............:)

For me the easiest way to get believable guitars is to use sampled audio loops.  I can usually find & tweak (using Audiosnap)  something that sounds completely natural for most projects. MIDI loops can also be good but the quality varies greatly and finding samples that respond naturally tends to be challenging.

Here's a good set to start with: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb10/articles/studioguitars.htm

-e.B